The other smiled faintly, “My mother will perchance be a little comforted by that. You will write her?”
“Yes—And Joscelyn?”
“Joscelyn?—how do you happen—?”
“You talked of her in your delirium. She lives in the Carolina hill country. I, too, know her and—love her.”
And then each told something of his story to the other; and they clasped hands as brave men can when enmity and prejudice and jealousy are swallowed up in the wide sympathy that lurks forever in the precincts of the Great Shadow.
“And when the war is over, and I tell her again of my love,” said Richard, with that impulsive generosity that was ever one of his characteristics, “I will tell her also of yours—and mayhap she will choose rather to cherish your memory than to give herself to me.”
And Barry turned his face to the wall and died, whispering his love for her to the last. It was a strange scene, this midnight confessional between two men who, all unknown to each other, had striven for the same heart-goal—who in life would have been bitter and unrelenting rivals, but who met and parted amid the shadows of death as friends and brothers. Richard wrote it all to Joscelyn, eloquently, passionately; portraying faithfully every emotion of the dying man.
“He loved you, Joscelyn, even as I do; only not so much, for methinks no man could do that. But he was brave and manly, and to have won his heart is proof of your sweetness and worth. He told me many things of that fearful night when I lay up in your garret, and downstairs you held your guests from all suspicion by your tact and courage. He hated Tarleton for his distrust of you, and I let him go to the far Shore in ignorance of how you saved me, fearing that he would not understand, and that his last moments would be imbittered by a useless jealousy.
“Did you love him? Am I breaking your heart with this news, my best beloved? If so, remember, I beseech you, how my own would break to know it.”
And Joscelyn read the letter by the fading sunset, and then sat with wet eyes through the star-haunted gloaming, thinking of the young life that had gone out in the red trail of war. She missed him as it did not seem possible she could have missed any one who had been so short a while in her consciousness.